Drakengard
Drakengard, known in Japan as , is a PlayStation 2 role playing game developed by cavia and published by Square Enix and Take Two Interactive. The game's theme revolves around "pacts"; as most characters initiate a pact with other entities to gain certain abilities, and must pay the price of the pact in return. Plot Setting The world is protected from the Watchers by the four seals; the seal of the ocean, the seal of the desert, the seal of the forest and the seal of the Goddess herself. However, the Cult of the Watchers had gained control of the Empire, and is seeking to destroy the seals in order to invoke the Watchers into the world. Characters Playable * : The main character, Caim initiated a pact with Angelus, a red dragon. Both were on the brink of death, and Caim forced Angelus to accept the pact, resulting in their lives tied together. The pact price was Caim's voice. * : A Red Dragon that is over 10,000 years old, Caim forced a pact with her in order to live that she reluctantly accepts. Being of a kind revered by others as masters of the natural world, Angelus comes off as arrogant, seeing humans as inferior, careless and defiant. * : An elf driven to madness after witnessing the murder of her family, she sealed a pact with Undine and Salamander in exchange for her fertility. * : An imperial, and twin brother to Manah, leader of the Cult of Watchers. He formed a pact with Golem in exchange for his time; causing him to stop growing up. * : A knight who had enough of the horrors of war. He formed a pact with a Faerie in exchange for his sight. Non-playable * : Caim's younger sister. Raised as a princess, she struggled to come to terms with her appointed role as the goddess at the time of her parents' death. As her cursed fate unfolded, Furiae began to despair. Living in her brother's castle, sitting quietly and offer silent prayers. She was abducted by Inuart, as she is the Final Seal that keeps the Grotesqueries from appearing in their world. Furiae harbored feelings toward Caim, and he rejecting her is a grand cause towards one of the endings. * : The hierarch whose duty allows him to speak directly with the goddess, Verdelet is a pious man who is always careful of his words and of doing the right thing, but places himself first should the situation becomes dire. When young, he made a pact with a dragon that is now in a petrified state that left a mark on his head, losing his hair and ability to grow more in exchange. * : Caim's former friend and son of a noble of the kingdom once ruled by Caim's family. Inuart possessed a beautiful singing voice and master of the harp. Though sincere and honest, his heart is weak and relies on his former betrothed, Furiae. But Inuart was taken by the Empire and tortured by them until he swore allegiance to them. He then made a pact with the very Imperial dragon that killed Caim's parents, sacrificing his talent for singing to cement the pact with a mark on his neck. He did this to fulfill his desire to protect Furiae instead of Caim, who was the object of Inuart's envy. * : A mysterious young girl who commands the empire as high priestess of the Cult of Watchers. But the truth, Manah was driven insane by outerworldly entities that she refers to as "the Watchers", who are using her body as a means to direct the Empire in the goal to destroy the world by removing the seals that prevent chaos from ensuing. Prior to it, Manah suffered abuse from her mother, which led to her current state of mind. *The "Grotesqueries": A mysterious otherworldly race that are tied to Manah's possession and would appear once the seals that keep them out of the world are no more. Though they failed to achieve their goal in the canonical ending, they did in the two alternate endings which revealed them to resemble giant human infants with teeth. They are in turn led by a more human adult-like queen. Story Caim, a soldier of the Union, furiously protects the Goddess of the Seals, his sister Furiae, from being captured by the Empire, led by the Cult of the Watchers. In the ensuing battle, a bloodied Caim comes across a dying red dragon, and proposes a pact to save both their lives. After vanquishing the Imperial Army, they escaped. Inuart, Furiae's ex-fiancee, proposes they go to the elf village for shelter. They discover that the Empire had attacked the village, which held the seal of the forest. The voice of Hierarch Verdelet, Guardian of the four Seals, speaks through the dragon to send Furiae under his protection in the desert. A dying elf reveals that cultists have taken the elven hostages to the Shrine of the Watchers. Caim sets off to rescue them while Inuart heeds the message of Verdelet and sets off to the desert temple with Furiae. Within the Shrine, Caim battles a wizard, and finds that the kidnapped elves were sent elsewhere. He meets with Leonard in the Valley of the Faeries, who joins after sealing a pact with a fairy. The dragon reveals that Inuart and Verdelet has been captured, and they rush to the desert to find Furiae unscathed. Caim goes off to rescue Inuart and Verdelet, taken to the Imperial dungeons. They only manage to save the Hierarch as Inuart was taken elsewhere. Verdelet reveals that with each seal destroyed, the burden of the seal will increase upon the Goddess. They rush off to the temple holding the seal of the desert, but finds the seal broken. Returning to Furiae, another voice beckons them to find the source, which is revealed to be Arioch, an imprisoned elf driven to insanity who had sealed a pact with Salamander and Undine. After retrieving Arioch, Inuart reappears with a black dragon. He had sealed a pact and is driven by the urge to see Furiae freed from the seal. After a battle with Caim, he kidnaps Furiae. Verdelet voices his concern over the Empire's reason in retrieving the Goddess; breaking all the seals will summon the "Seed of Destruction", which is thought will help reconstruct the world. They travel to Imperial lands and find a young orphan boy who had made a pact with a Golem. The boy tells them that his sister was taken by the Empire, and asked to join their party. They traveled on, fighting ogres and man-made cyclops, and joins the final battle between the Union and the Empire. They succeeded in defeating the commanders of the Empire, but the sky turned black just as the Union were celebrating. Fireballs rained down, destroying all beneath the heavens. Dead Imperial soldiers were reanimated, and a fortress appears in the sky. Inuart appears and a fight takes place between him and Caim, but Inuart is defeated. He scrambles back into the castle. He had been possessed and was reawakened, only to find that he had killed Furiae while being possessed. The High Priestess of the Cult reveals herself to Inuart, and Caim who arrived afterwards; an innocent-looking young girl named Manah, who is Seere's sister. With the Seeds of Resurrection appearing in the Imperial City, Caim rushes off to destroy it before the priestess uses it. They manage to stop Manah and Verdelet sealed her magics. A new seal must be found to replace the dead goddess, and the dragon volunteers to be the new seal. She revealed her name as Angelus to Caim as she disintegrates to form a bloody seal. However, the story deviates with the appearance of the Seeds of Resurrection. Inuart is driven by madness to resurrect the dead Furiae using the Seed. However, the resurrected Furiae was not the Furiae Inuart had known, and killed him effortlessly. Caim struggles to defeat the resurrected Furiae as the world continues to descend into chaos. Yet the story deviates again with Furiae's death at the fortress. This breaks the hold of the Watchers over the dragons, who staged a revolt against humanity. The red dragon also turned against Caim, but it is apparent that she regrets it. Caim was forced to battle against the red dragon, but even as he defeats her, more dragons appear as the world descends into chaos. But alas the story deviates with Furiae taking her own life in the fortress. When Seere arrived, his anger could not be contained, and he killed Manah. However, this caused the Watchers; the Grotesqueries, to rain down upon the world. Led by the queen, they consumed everything and anything in their path. Feeling guilty of his actions, Seere proposed to Caim to the queen in hopes to seal all with his power over Time. The final deviation to the story takes place once the Grotesqueries appear. When Caim and Angelus rushed off towards the Grotesqueries and their queen, it opened a rift of space and time, throwing them into modern Tokyo, where they battle. Caim and Angelus finally defeats the queen, saving his world from chaos, but at the price of his life when jetplanes fired missiles upon the dragon, killing them both. Gallery File:Caim & Angelus.jpg|Caim and Angelus Seere & Golem.jpg|Seere and Golem. Lenoard & Fairy.jpg|Leonard and Faerie. Category:Games